It's A Thriller...No, It's A Commercial...No...

This is almost as clever as the disassembled Honda Accord from several years ago. Enjoy!

My New Year's Goals

Resolution - A solution. A firmness of purpose. A wrapping up. In other words, an ending.

It's easy to make resolutions and very difficult to keep them. Not everyone has the iron will and determination to say, "There is something in my life that I don't like, and I'm going to completely change it, right now," then follow through on it. I admire those who can, like my father.

In a rare point of fact, I have kept the last New Year's Resolution I made, several years ago. I decided I wouldn't make any more New Year's Resolutions. Things have been just a little bit simpler for me ever since.

I am setting a few goals for 2011. I am going to first give myself a tool to help me measure how I'm doing. I believe this could lead to some big improvements I've been wanting to make. So, without further ado:

1. Begin each day with a short task list to get done today, and check each one off as I complete it.


2. Move more and eat less. Keep a record; if it isn't written down, it didn't happen.


3. Try to write daily.


4. I have a cell phone and people with whom I wish to maintain contact. Connect the two.


5. Be very deliberate in what I buy to read. As Lisa and I put our library together, I am finding more and more books I have yet to read. There are a few authors -- Jim Butcher, Lee Child, and Dean Koontz among them -- whose releases we will purchase in hardcover as soon as possible after their release dates; everyone else should wait while I work on the backlog we already own.

I think I can do this.

RIP Gerry Rafferty

Gerry Rafferty passed away yesterday. Many people remember him as part of 1970s soft rock group Stealer's Wheel, from their song Stuck In The Middle With You. I recall him especially for his solo hit Baker Street, which was the soundtrack of my summer of transition from high school to college. It fits a bittersweet time in my life, and I'm grateful for the memories. Enjoy.

A Special Ring

An older, white haired man walked into a jewelry store one Friday evening with a beautiful young gal at his side. He told the jeweler he was looking for a special ring for his girlfriend. The jeweler looked through his stock and brought out a $5,000 ring and showed it to him. The old man said, "I don't think you understand, I want something very special."

At that statement, the jeweler went to his special stock and brought another ring over. "Here's a stunning ring at only $40,000," the jeweler said.

The young lady's eyes sparkled and her whole body trembled with excitement. The old man seeing this said, "We'll take it."

The jeweler asked how payment would be made and the old man stated, by check. "I know you need to make sure my check is good, so I'll write it now and you can call the bank Monday to verify the funds and I'll pick the ring up Monday afternoon," he said.

Monday morning, a very teed-off jeweler phoned the old man. "There's no money in that account."

"I know," said the old man, "but can you imagine the weekend I had?"

RIP Elizabeth Edwards

You were the essence of grace under fire, and I have no better words than your own:

The days of our lives, for all of us, are numbered. We know that. And, yes, there are certainly times when we aren’t able to muster as much strength and patience as we would like. It’s called being human. But I have found that in the simple act of living with hope, and in the daily effort to have a positive impact in the world, the days I do have are made all the more meaningful and precious. And for that I am grateful. It isn’t possible to put into words the love and gratitude I feel to everyone who has and continues to support and inspire me every day. To you I simply say: you know.

Privilege

It's rather earlier on Thanksgiving morning than I intended to be up. The cats are fed, the coffee is started, Bach's Brandenburg Concertos are playing, and I have the time before the bustling of the day -- yes, there will be bustling today, preparing the traditional Thanksgiving dinner and packing to travel -- begins to set down these musings.

I've spent a lot of time over the past year reading the thoughts of Internet sages on privilege, the unearned accumulation of advantage. This is nothing I set out to do. These various essays and rants were simply posted where I read anyway. No doubt this confession will affirm in some minds exactly the points about privilege. You see, I'm a 50 year old white male from the American South.

I've never had to remind anyone I was talking to that my eyes are on my face, not my chest. I've never seen employees anywhere I've shopped spending more time watching me to be sure I wasn't slipping merchandise into my pockets than waiting on the customers in front of them. I've never been turned away from voting. And what's more, I've never had to even think about these things.

Privilege.

If you're reading this and your primary assumption amounts to, "Well, it's about time he realized how lucky he is," may I suggest that you learn to recognize the blinders your high horse is wearing. You can learn from me as surely as I can from you.

I am incredibly grateful for the life I have, and even more, for the help I've had getting here. Yes, I have seized the opportunities that have come my way. Yes, I'd be stupid to pass up the advantages that life has afforded me, both for myself and my family.

And yet...

I am striving to live a life of of honesty and integrity. I can give up things so that others can have them and still get far more than I sacrificed. After all, life is hardly a zero-sum game.

On this Thanksgiving Day, I don't want to be treated the same as everyone else. I want everyone else to be treated the same as me.

The Difference Between Legal And Fair

In my last post, I embedded a video from YouTube about a middle school football team using a particularly clever play to score a touchdown. And, in the limited context of the video, it is hilarious.

Frank Deford is one of the most insightful sportswriters ever, and he has some sobering thoughts on this play, put into a larger context:

...it is perfectly legal to act in a game. But the players who do that in the pros are not embarrassing the opposition. They're just trying to con the umpire. It's a benign bit of hustle that would've made for some good Aesop's Fables if old Aesop were around writing a sports blog nowadays.

But the Driscoll team didn't act instinctively to try to put one over on a ref. The middle schoolers didn't even come up with the ruse. Their coach dreamed up the play, and even participated in it, hollering from the sideline. The referees weren't victimized. In fact, they had to play along.

No, it was only the other team's kids who were embarrassed and belittled by a children's coach being a wise guy, a bully of sorts. It wasn't genius at all. Sure, it was legal, but it wasn't fair. Laugh at kids being outslicked by a grown-up, and you're cruel. That isn't sport.

You can read his full commentary here.

My children are all young adults, well past the age to participate in youth sports, but I still find it worthwhile to ask myself, how would they have felt to be on the other side of this legal play? How would I have felt for them? I suspect I would have tended towards Mr. Deford's position, and that gives me an uncomfortable feeling about myself.

Surprise!

I saw this on Good Morning America yesterday, and I laughed until the tears were rolling down my face and my belly hurt. It was worth it.

Hereafter

Hereafter is the story of three people touched by death.

Marie Lelay is an investigative journalist on vacation in Indonesia with her producer/lover. It is their last morning before returning to Paris, and she realizes her companion has not gotten any souvenirs for his kids. She tells him she is going shopping for them and asks him to come along, but he just wants to sleep as long as he can. As she is running her self-appointed errand, a tsunami strikes. She drowns, and then we're...somewhere else...with her. Back in our world, a couple of strangers try, and fail, to revive her, but she comes back on her own. Changed.

Marcus is a young boy, ten, maybe eleven. He seems a little ethereal to begin with, sweet, slight. His twin Jason, always wearing a cap, decisive, is Marcus' anchor in this world. In fact, Jason is the anchor of his family. We first see them getting their picture struck, paying the photographer with change scraped together dearly. Then, at home, they put the framed picture and a cupcake topped with a single candle out on the kitchen table, a birthday surprise for their Mum. She never shows up before they go to bed. The first thing we see the next morning is the photo and the cupcake, with the candle melted down all over it. The first thing we here is a loud knock on the door, followed by shouts demanding entrance. It's child protective services. Mum, you see, is a heroine addict. The twins, with Marcus following Jason's lead, work around the social workers, cleaning up the apartment, finding Mum and bringing her in the door just after the social worker, with bags of groceries. See, all is right with our world!

Once the social workers are gone, Mum sees the picture her boys made for her. Even as she's still coming down off her latest high, we see that she does love her sons and is trying. She says something about a drug that may help her kick the addiction. Jason -- strong, decisive Jason -- calls the chemist (we're in London), determines that he has the medicine, instructs Marcus to stay with Mum, and runs off to get help for Mum.

After he has gotten the medicine and is on his way home, Jason is accosted by some neighborhood toughs. "What's with the cap? What's in the bag? It's the basic we're bigger, we're bored, and you're our toy attitude. Only this time, Jason runs! But Jason can't outrun the lorry on the street. Unlike after Marie's drowning, no one tries to revive Jason. Marcus knows with a twin's certainty that something wrong has befallen his other half. When he arrives on the scene, he finds Jasosn' unbloodied cap, picks it up, dons it. He, too, is changed.

Those who sacrifice for others, it seems, are sacrificed along the way.

George Lonegan is a very rare thing, a genuine psychic. He can actually see that somewhere else Marie went while she was dead, and he can tell people the Truth. His brother Billy considers this a gift, something that is a license to print money. George considers it a curse, because the Truth sets him apart. And that being set apart is why he works as a longshoreman and takes a cooking class. His love of Charles Dickens is simply his own.

Every other "psychic" we see in the movie, and we see quite a few, is a charlatan. They each put on a show with scientific gadgets or candles and shadows or limited seating seminars when they're doing a reading or contacting the other side; it's all smoke and mirrors. George simply asks whomever he is reluctantly reaching beyond the veil for to let him hold their hands for a moment. "It makes a connection, and that helps", he tells them.

From this set up, we see how Marie moves from a hard-hitting journalist after her next expose to a seeker, asking "What happens to us when we die?"; how Marcus, wearer of his twin's cap and resident of the foster care system, persists in trying to reach Jason to tell him that he can't do this life alone and needs him back; how George is seeking connections. And we see how their stories eventually intertwine. This is where George is changed, not by death, but by life.

Of the actors, it's worth noting that Jay Mohr as Billy Lonegan plays an excellent sleaze. And Matt Damon...the man is a chameleon. I believe in him as totally as George Lonegan as I do in him as Jason Bourne.

The movie is paced slowly, deliberately, in a way that reminds me of Gattaca. Other than the tsunami and the car accident, there is no action, which is hard to believe of a Clint Eastwood directed movie. And, in the tsunami, where it awkwardly overruns those trying to flee it, we see that Eastwood is not at all at ease with CGI special effects.

The movie is all exposition and character study. As Lisa put it when we were talking about it, "I was expecting some great revelation."

You see, despite the advertising, Hereafter has next to nothing to do with the supernatural. That's a head fake, in the spirit of Randy Pausch's Last Lecture. This movie has to do with curiosity, persistence, integrity and connections. It's about how to live.

Of Old Spice And Sesame Street

I'm sure many of you remember this most clever of advertisements from the 2010 Super Bowl:




When my children were very young, I watched Sesame Street with them after work. If you've never seen it, you won't realize that it, like the old Bugs Bunny and Road Runner cartoons, was made with multiple levels of humor, just so that parents like me could comfortably watch with their kids. Believe me, it wasn't excruciating to sit through an hour of Sesame Street the way it was through five minutes of Barney!

I hope you enjoy Grover's interpretation of the Old Spice commercial as much as I did:

Moss Man, Thwarted

Gregory Liascos of Portland, Oregon is a rather clever man, but probably not a dog lover.

A caretaker at the Rice Northwest Museum of Rocks and Minerals in Hillsboro, Oregon found a hole cut in a wall of an exterior bathroom last Wednesday and called the local police. The police, including a K-9 team, were on the scene around 5:00 am Thursday morning. The dog alerted his handler that he smelled something, then bit the ground, which cried out in pain.

It was Liascos, wearing a ghillie suit -- think Marine snipers -- that made him look like a patch of grass.

He is currently a guest of Washington County, pending a hearing on charges of burglary and criminal mischief.

Colder Weather

Well, it's a winding road
when you're in the lost and found.
You're a lover, I'm a runner,
and we go round and round.

This is the heart of the story the Zac Brown Band tells in Colder Weather, the latest song I can't stop listening to.

Like many a song of loneliness and loss on the road, it sounds gorgeous. Every musical detail, from the instrumental arrangement to the vocal harmonies to the melody, is as exquisite as I've ever heard.

Unlike many a song of loneliness and loss on the road, the road isn't the storytelling device. We get a couple of vignettes, first hers, then his. In both vignettes, we get details that we can see -- taillights shining through a window pane, a night as black as a cup of coffee -- so that this story feels lived in.

There's a highly expressive vocal bridge after the verses, and structurally, it's a rather conventional climax to the song. It does deliver an effective emotional payoff.

Nothing else in the song works quite as well as the emotionally devastating coda. There's enough ambiguity here that we're unsure if the guy is about to climb into his car again to wander after another phone call to her, or if he's standing next to her grave, remembering and regretting.

I'm with your ghost again,
It's a shame about the weather...

It's Just As Well They Can't Read

I told Sheldon and Leonard, our male kittens, that, since they were going to be asleep during the procedure and didn't have to shave their testicles beforehand, getting neutered today was no big deal. I don't think they bought it.

Marching To The Beat Of A Different...Guitarist?

David is, among many other fine things, a guitarist. We were driving from some point A to some other point B during his last visit a couple of months ago, and, being fans of classic rock, we were listening to Boston's debut CD. Long Time was playing, the song reached the bridge between the first and second verses, and as it went into the brief strummed acoustic guitar passage, David said, "This is my favorite guitar riff." I made some sound of absent-minded agreement, and we went on with our day.

I didn't think about this exchange for probably another month, until the next time I heard the song. Then, I really thought about what he said.

I think of a riff as a lead part, but the piece David commented on was definitely rhythm guitar. It is a catchy piece of musicianship, one that lingers in the mind, but it's rhythm guitar. David is intensely serious about his music, so he's very qualified to recognize a riff. But, it's rhythm guitar!

Music is one of life's great pleasures, both intellectual and visceral, and is there any real reason I should have hesitated to embrace a new perspective on it? On mature consideration (don't laugh), I didn't think so, and I have found that my musical enjoyment is enhanced by listening to it a bit differently, a bit more attentively.

So, here's a thank you to one of my favorite guitarists, my youngest son David.

An Oral History

I subscribe to a periodic email newsletter from Mental Floss, and on a day home sick from work, while I was cleaning out my inbox, I came across a message in which Mangesh, one of the founders of the magazine and website, shared some of his 9/11 stories. From his name, it sounds like he "ain't from around here." I think that really means that he may have a far keener appreciation of this country than many of us who are of European descent. Whether or not that's true, he included a link to a short piece at StoryCorps, an oral history site.

Go and listen to John Vigiano tell about his sons, New York City firefighter John Jr. and New York City policeman Joe. His story will both break your heart and put a smile on your face.

September 11th has been on my mind a great deal lately. I was beyond disappointed in the news coverage from the major news outlets, especially since so much attention, on that day, was paid to the proposed Islamic Center near Ground Zero and to the Florida Koran-burning-that-wasn't. On that day, of all days, we needed to remember what happened in 2001. We needed to remember how we weren't Southerners or New Englanders or Midwesterners right after that day. We weren't black or red or white or yellow. We were just Americans. United in grief, in loss, in anger, in outrage.

I don't speak for anyone but myself, but I'd like to be just an American again. I don't need any other label for the world to know me. I don't need to start a fight with anyone over it, but I'd love to finish one that anyone else starts. Give me a chance, and if I can, I'll help anyone who needs it.

And honestly, I hope that I speak for Mangesh from Mental Floss, as well as for John Vigiano. They both spoke for me.

Changing Homes

This morning, around 10:15, I drove back over to Greensboro to pay a visit to the old apartment. I had a step stool with me, so I could change out the few compact fluorescent bulbs we had installed for some inexpensive -- ok, cheap -- incandescent bulbs. Before I walked out of the first home Lisa and I shared, I took a last look around and whispered, "You served us well, thank you" to the walls that no longer held any reflection of our personalities. Then, I went by the complex office, turned in all our keys, and left without another glance back.

It's been an arduous task, this moving. It's not that far between Greensboro and High Point, not in physical distance. But, it's a world away, going from renting an apartment to owning a house. Not just financially, but mentally and philosophically.

After all, what does home really mean?

There are the cliches: Home is where the heart is. Home is where, when you show up, they have to take you in.

There's the thought that home is your place. There are many people who would die before giving up their piece of land.

For many others, home is wherever their family is.

I find truth in all of these. I had a time in my life when, between school and several part-time jobs, I was never at the apartment I lived in then. And when I was, my then wife wanted to go out, to eat, to shop, to visit her family. For a time, I was rootless.

By the time I really had a place to be, years and children later, I was losing that marriage. And after that, I had an apartment, joint legal custody of my children but only part-time physical custody, and so I was largely alone.

I found in my Lisa and in the apartment we lived in the last six years both the person and the place; I fully understand what home means to me. It's where the rhythms of shared lives come together. We learned the little things, where the smooth places were in the roads leading to the apartment, which restaurants had not only the good food but the good people who came to know us and always make us feel welcome, when the upstairs neighbors were going to be loud, when the maintenance staff would be mowing and blowing leaves onto our patio, when the garbage trucks would make pickups, when traffic would be favorable to our movements.

Now, it's time to learn all those things anew, in a new place. Our home.

Peaked At 5

Cammie King Conlon, age 76, passed away two days from lung cancer. She was billed as "Cammie King" when she portrayed Bonnie Blue Butler in Lisa's favorite movie, Gone With The Wind. And frankly, my dear, we do give a damn.

The Carolina Emperor

This emerald was found, in August 2009, near Hiddenite, NC:

It's called the Carolina Emperor, and it was 310 carats uncut. I had forgotten that North Carolina has such things to offer.

One Week and Counting...

I can't wait!!!

The Things That Come Out Of Thailand

Cute, no? Earlier this week, a Thai national tried to smuggle this two month old through Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi International Airport in a suitcase full of stuffed animals. He was found when the suitcase was x-rayed prior to boarding a flight to Iran.

Bad Literary Mashups

Earlier this week, thriller write Meg Gardiner joined in a Twitter game suggested by another writer to come up with titles for, well, bad literary mashups, in the tradition of such recent artistic triumphs as Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter. After she came up with such gems as Eat, Pray, Jaws and Dracujo (The Vampire Puppy), she invited readers of her blog lying for a living to join in the fun.

Being a bit of a sick puppy myself, I couldn't resist. I did range farther afield than many, because I brought in song titles, as well as movies and books. Be warned, what follows may make your head hurt:

• Watership Down Among the Dead Men


• The Ninja and Mrs. Muir


• On The Road Less Traveled Again


• Lust For Life In The Fast Lane


• If You Give A Mouse The Cuckoo’s Egg


• The Phantom Tollbooth of the Opera


• Barbarians At The Anubis Gate


• Crash: A Bend In The Road Not Taken


• The Canterbury Tales Of The South Pacific


• A Bridge Over The River Kwai Runs Through It


• In A Little Cold Blood Night Music (I think I’m trying too hard!)


• A Christmas Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice

On Patience

Our greatest asset is patience; our greatest weakness is throwing in the towel. Banish discouragement and feelings of impossibility by working hard, doing more, and not giving in! A diamond was only made beautiful after millions of years as a lump of coal.

- SparkPeople's Healthy Reflections

50

Well, the countdown is over and, as of 10 minutes ago, I am 50 years old. I've been blogging it as Taking Stock for nearly a year and a half; in reviewing, I've found I didn't write nearly as many entries as I expected to.

For example, my last post in this series was about why I like country music, and it was dated July 11. I only got half my thoughts down, and I said I'd come back to the subject the next day, but I never did. Oh, I did half-heartedly start one evening, late, but the words wouldn't come. I've learned in my three years(!) writing Babble On that forcing a post only makes me unhappy with both the effort and the quality of the finished piece. I'd rather not publish crap.

By the way, Country music's roots are Southern and rural, like mine. It prizes melody and straightforward storytelling, with a very subtle sophistication in the musical execution, more than any other genre of popular music I know (yes, jazz did grow out of the blues, but listen to Western Swing and tell me improvisation has no place in Country). In attitude, Country promotes self-reliance, family, and patriotism, while not shying away from the grittier and seamier side of life; that's the old "drinkin' and cheatin' songs". There is an aura of realism to this music and an awareness of its history. You really can sum up what I find attractive about Country music by listening to Red Headed Stranger. That's why Country music.

I intended to write about the sacredness I find in laughter, the happiness and the pain of being a divorced father whose children live several hundred miles away, the joy and the work of growing into the provider and intimate partner a husband should be. Come to think of it, I did cover those last two subjects more deeply than any others.

It's interesting that Lisa overheard someone at my high school reunion say that I was about the last person they expected to get married. That was the 1978 version of me, a lonely little nerd with next to no self-confidence, who used what humor he could muster as a substitute for social skills. And it worked; my best friend actually thought I was outgoing in those days! The 2010 version of me is a valued and knowledgeable employee, a solid behind-the-scenes volunteer with a charity I believe in, and a decent provider, parent, and spouse.

I love my life. I do have regrets, as any person who takes a thoughtful look back at himself should; I could always have done better. However, in spite of those regrets and the often deep accompanying pain, I would change nothing. I am who I am because of my journey.

I will continue my journey as I have so far, taking in knowledge and hopefully transforming it through experience into wisdom, prizing the grace and mystery and beauty in this life, and loving my wife and my children and my parents and my friends as deeply and as well as I can.

And I will always, always laugh.

A Promise

To my son Andy, you should consider my home your refuge, for as long as I live, no matter what.

Just Another Morning

I woke up around 6:00 this morning, when I wished I could sleep in longer. Since I couldn't, I did what I do most mornings when I can't fall asleep again. I fired up the ebook reader on my phone and read. Right now, I'm making a second pass through the Miles Vorkosigan series, which is not only one of the most enjoyable SF series it's been my pleasure to encounter, but one of the most thought provoking as well.

After about half an hour of this, I got out of bed, made coffee, and fed our six cats. Well, I did make them wait until I had the coffee started, and only Leonard complained at all. I still haven't seen Tempe this morning, but I'll bet that he and Blazer are back in the bedroom snoozing with Lisa.

We picked Andy and David up at the Charlotte airport yesterday afternoon; they are here for their summer visit. Andy only has a week off from his summer job, David two weeks, and I'm glad that their visits from Indiana have become less events than just a regular part of life. I like my sons, who are both growing into fine young adults, and it's very interesting to spend time having professional discussions with Andy. He's a third year electrical engineering student who is working for a web hosting company this summer. I read just enough about hardware and he about software that we can geek it up together. I can look to my left right now and see him sitting on the sofa surfing the net on his phone.

David is still abed. He stayed up later than his brother, which I think is a pretty usual thing, and watched The Italian Job. He likes going through our old DVDs when he's here.

Sadly, Gigi won't be here this summer. She's very busy with her job search and has to be home for whenever an interview comes up. Maybe later in the year...

In about 10 minutes, I will be logging into work. If things go well over the next couple of hours, a team I'm on will finally complete an on-again, off-again two year project to migrate several applications from four Windows 2000 servers to two Windows 2003 servers. That will save our customers a bunch in IT charges, give them better application performance, and simplify support from IT. Can't wait.

All in all, it's just another morning.

The 32nd

Last night, I did something I've never done before. I attended a reunion of my high school class. In the 32 years since I graduated, I've missed two reunions, at ten and thirty years. With the last reunion only two years gone by, why reunite again so soon?

My first guess is that my classmates simply needed their Eddie fix...nah, probably not.

More likely this is a bunch of people who by-and-large just like each other, who enjoy a lively get-together, and who had enough people willing to organize the event that it simply had to happen. Oh, and we celebrated with quite a few people turning 50 (that may be translated as commiserated with).

David Gore's Bummin' Hole Lodge was the perfect site for our shindig, a very rustic cabin on a pond. It's far enough back in the woods without doubling as the set of Deliverance that we didn't disturb anyone. One of the biggest advantages for Lisa and me is that it's close enough to Dad and Mom's home that we could have made it there in five minutes, if Dad hadn't closed off one of the farm roads a few years ago. As it is, we had to take a couple of county roads, making the trip ten minutes. Twice the travel time, what a burden!

The food and libations flowed freely, and conversation followed. It was wonderful to catch up with old friends unseen in 30 years (yes, Jimmy H. and Jimmy W., I'm looking at both of you), to exchange so many hugs, to compare numbers of children and marriages, to reflect on careers and on missing classmates, and to start thinking about the next time we'll get together.

To Antoinette, Steve, and Susan, (as Steve's wife put it) fellow IT whores -- I hope we can swap war stories again soon.

To Al, Hong, Jimmy H., Kim, and Patti -- I look forward to sharing a table with you again.

To Anthony, Anthony, Sherrie, Tami, and Wanda (with apologies to anyone I left out) -- thanks for the fantastic job putting this thing together.

To Coburn -- I'll probably never top that line about not being able to make a horse put on a bathing suit.

To Kim and Tami -- Thank you very much for your kind words about Babble On.

And finally, to Beatrice -- you still scare the hell out of a lot of us!

50 - 26: Why Country Music?

Country is my favorite musical genre, but it hasn't always been so. In fact, I used to detest it. This is a bit surprising to me today, considering the music I liked when I began to be aware of the wider world beyond myself and my immediate family.

I was just shy of my teenage years when I discovered the pleasures of music. John Denver was the biggest artist around, in that time between the end of the Beatles and the rise of Elton John. Denver's music was sweet, almost saccharine, full of pretty melodies and simple, back-to-nature lyrics. For the most part it hasn't aged that well -- Rocky Mountain High, and perhaps Matthew, being the most notable exceptions -- but it did provide a safe, comfortable entry to American popular music in the early 1970s.

I soon graduated from my "gateway drug" to a more lasting addiction. It wasn't really a great stretch from John Denver's country pop to the country rock of Linda Ronstadt and the Eagles, but especially the latter have proven a deeper lyrical sophistication combined with complex vocal harmonies and outstanding musicianship can stand the test of time.

In case you the reader have any doubts, I remain an Eagles partisan after 35 years.

At the same time that I was captivated by the music coming out of Southern California, I was disavowing the country music largely coming out of Nashville. I thought of it, playing off my father's cues, as empty, twangy noise. This would have been around 1975, and in many ways, musical history has vindicated my views. The biggest days of Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard were over, I had no interest at the time in Loretta Lynn, and the music was produced to be heard on radio, not really to last.

This included, as far as I knew, Willie Nelson. I knew his huge hit Blue Eyes Cryin' in the Rain, but not his concept album Red Headed Stranger. Discovering this artist, his music, and in particular this album are crucial to my larger point, and I'll revisit the subject again tomorrow.

So You Think You Can Dance

The only reality TV show I watch, generally, is The Amazing Race. It's been the only one that's felt, well, real to me. This week, Lisa's mom Meki has been visiting, and we're just off some of our usual routine.

That's how we came to be channel surfing last Wednesday and ended up watch Fox's dance contest. And guess what? I ended up not only intrigued, but hooked.

This show is vastly different than Dancing With The Stars, which is mildly entertaining celebrity fluff. SYTYCD is actually an intense, highly compressed, and competitive apprenticeship. I watch the dances and react emotionally to the showmanship. The judges are critiquing the dances and dancers on their technical merits, and they are teaching aspiring professionals.

Like every other reality competition on TV, the public votes, with the dancers getting the lowest totals in danger of being eliminated. Unlike every other reality TV competition, the judges decide who goes.

No, the judges are not unbiased, and that factors into the eliminations.

It's extremely entertaining TV, and it's refreshing that there are no product placements.

Toy Story 3

The characters familiar from Toy Story and Toy Story 2, especially Woody and Buzz, are all here. Well, not all, as things change in 15 years, and some toys are no longer with us. In fact, since Andy is about to go to college, things are totally in flux.

Andy intends for all his old toys, except Woody, to be stored in the attic. Woody is supposed to go with him to college. There's a mix up, and all the toys end up being donated by Andy's mom to Sunnyside Daycare. And the toy-in-chief there, Lots O' Hugging Bear, is not the sweet and lovable plush toy he seems to be...

You'd think that the third movie in an animated trilogy would be, at best, silly kid's stuff. And you'd be right if the movie had been made by any other outfit than Pixar. This studio's mantra is story first and foremost, and they have never deviated from this. Toy Story 3 is visually gorgeous, and the tale it tells is by turns hilarious, horrifying, uplifting, and bittersweet. The people who made this movie understand the appeal that looking back on childhood has for adults, as well as the pull adulthood has on children. The transitions depicted here feel absolutely spot on.

Yeah, I'm a Pixar fanboy, and why not? They simply don't miss.

Independence Day

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Of all the sentences that have written, uttered, or thought in the history of the United States, this is the one that most defines the ideal of America. It is the possibility of equality of opportunity that brings so many to our shores. This is the reason for the Bill of Rights.

It was Lincoln's inspiration for Four score and seven years ago, our forefathers brought forth on this continent a nation dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Do yourself a favor, those of you who are, like me, American. Take a break from the fireworks, the cook out, the travel sometime on this 4th of July and look up some of our historic documents. Read the words quietly to yourself, aloud to your spouse and children, or broadcast them to your neighbors. Then, think about what the words really mean.

If you can do this, you are more fortunate than most of humanity who has come before you. Take the opportunity to exercise your liberty and help someone else with their pursuit of happiness. Help pass on the ideal.